Music Aimed At 'Wild Souls'

Rivertown Festival - Deland-St. Johns/September 14th

September 11, 1991|By Barb Shepherd, Special To The Sentinel

Night on the Rivertown Festival organizers are calling it a 1950s Street Dance, but the three-hour disc-spinning extravaganza planned as part of Saturday's street party could turn out to be a '60s love-in or a '70s rock'n'roll bash.

Two things are certain: There will be music and there will be nostalgia.

Disc jockey Dan Stief will let the crowd dictate what kind.

''We'll just kind of see what people respond to,'' he said.

Stief, 40, who uses the stage name ''The Wizard of Music,'' is a musician and former radio disc jockey and television producer. A newcomer to DeLand, he volunteered his services to help boost the festival's entertainment budget and to give a gift to a town that has captured his heart.

After visiting with a friend in DeLand, Terri and Dan Stief moved from Tampa in March. Stief said they're not sure what it is about DeLand that pulled them in, but they are committed to staying, although Dan Stief was recently laid off from the job he came here to take.

''There's a friendliness and a caring and sharing among the people,'' he said.

Enchanted with the downtown area, Dan Stief quickly became interested in the Main Street DeLand Association. He was one of about 50 applicants for the vacant Main Street manager post.

Learning that entertainment dollars for the Night on the Rivertown festival were tight this year, he agreed to host a street dance for free.

The dance is set for 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Woodland Boulevard between Church and Rich avenues, in the area where most of the food vendors will be stationed.

While wild souls dance on the festival's north end, extroverts of another kind are invited to sing on the south.

A karaoke sing-along is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on the south stage in the Fresco's restaurant parking lot on Woodland Boulevard.

For karaoke, audience members take to the microphones to provide vocals for recorded music.

The Japanese entertainment is gaining popularity in the United States, with a growing number of lounges offering karaoke shows in lieu of live bands. Karaoke is a Japanese word meaning ''empty orchestra.''

Karaoke and recorded music come cheaper than live bands, so they helped fill out the entertainment roster in a lean year, said Gail Jenkins, one of the festival organizers.

Three live bands are scheduled throughout the festival, on the main stage at the intersection of Indiana Avenue and Woodland Boulevard.

From 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., Cherry Deuce will play music from the '50s to the '80s. From 6 p.m. to 7:30, Stoney Sixma's country music band will take the main stage. The reggae band Windjammer will wrap up the live entertainment with a show from 8-10 p.m., also on the main stage.

Providing entertainment is one of the biggest expenses of staging Night on the Rivertown, said Main Street President Susan Macon of DeHuy Jewelers. In addition to hiring performers, electricity, stage lighting and sound equipment must be provided, either by Main Street or the performers.